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AUCTION

France’s legendary Ritz hotel breaks record in furniture auction

Luxury furniture auctioned off by the legendary Ritz hotel in Paris sold for 7.3 million euros, a world record in the industry, auction house Artcurial said Saturday.

France's legendary Ritz hotel breaks record in furniture auction
Photo: AFP

The Paris hotel, home for a while to Ernest Hemingway, Marcel Proust and Coco Chanel, sold off all 10,000 pieces of furniture and decor.

They included stools from the Hemingway Bar, a 19th-century bathtub, and sofas and a harp from the Proust Lounge.

The Ritz sale outperformed other hotels around the world, the auction house said.

In 2013 in Paris, Hotel de Crillon made 5.9 million euros from a furniture sale while Plaza Athenee made 1.4 million euros.

The 3,400 lots that were up for grabs were on sale between April 17th and 21st.

Buyers bid on objects ranging from velvet security cordons and curtain ties, to rugs, bedframes and sets of bathrobes and slippers embroidered with the Ritz insignia.

Price estimates ran from 100 euros for a pair of tablecloths to 10,000 euros for a pair of nymph sculptures carrying bronze candelabras that used to decorate the lobby.

“The Ritz has excited a sudden passion, attracting buyers from all over the world,” auctioneer Francois Tajan told AFP.

The Ritz decided to sell the pieces from its famous Place Vendome address when it reopened in June 2016 after four years of extensive renovations.

Owned by Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed since 1979, the hotel had accumulated impressive quantities of objects since it was opened in 1898 by Cesar Ritz.

It has served as the backdrop to several key moments in French history.

The Nazis requisitioned it during World War II but had cleared out by the time Ernest Hemingway burst in with a group of Resistance fighters on August 25th, 1944, gun in hand, to “personally liberate” it.

Realising he was too late Hemingway took to the bar where he is said to have run up a tab for 51 dry Martinis.

In 1997, tragedy befell the hotel when Britain's Princess Diana, who had been staying there, was killed in a car accident in a Paris tunnel while being pursued by paparazzi.

The hotel made global headlines again in January, when robbers armed with guns and hatchets ransacked jewellery shops on the ground floor, making off with over four million euros in gems and watches. 

READ ALSO: Three charged with Paris Ritz jewellery heist: judicial source

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DIAMOND

Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva

An extremely rare pink diamond will be auctioned in Geneva on November 11 by Sotheby's, which says it is worth between $23 and $38 million.

Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva
A model poses with the “The Spirit of the Rose” diamond during a press preview on Friday. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
Named “The Spirit of the Rose” after a famous Russian ballet, the 14.83-carat diamond mined in Russia is the biggest ever to go under the hammer in its category — “fancy vivid purple-pink”.
 
The occurrence of pink diamonds in nature is extremely rare in any size,” Gary Schuler, head of Sotheby's jewellery division, said in a statement. “Only one per cent of all pink diamonds are larger than 10-carats.”
   
Speaking to AFP, Benoit Repellin, head of fine jewellery auctions at Sotheby's Geneva, said the oval-shaped diamond was “completely pure.”
 
 
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The rough diamond was unearthed by Russia's Alrosa — one of the world's leading diamond producers — in the Republic of Sakha in the northeast of the country in July 2017.
   
Repellin said it took a painstaking year for cutting masters to turn the diamond into its polished form.
   
Sotheby's said the world auction record for a diamond and any gemstone or jewel was the “CTF Pink Star”, a 59.60-carat oval pink diamond that sold for $71.2 million in Hong Kong in 2017.
   
According to Repellin, five out of the 10 most valuable diamonds ever sold at auction were pink.
   
The sale of this gem coincides with the closure of the world's largest pink diamond mine in Australia after it exhausted its reserves of the precious stones.
   
The Argyle mine, in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, churned out more than 90 percent of the world's pink diamonds.
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